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Be sober.

Be watchful.

Your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, is walking about, seeking whom he may devour. Withstand him, steadfast in your faith, knowing that the same sufferings are being accomplished in your brothers who are in the world.

Now the God of all favor,

Who called you to his eternal majesty in Christ,
After you have suffered a little while,

Will himself perfect, stablish, strengthen you, To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

By Silvanus our faithful brother, as I consider him, I have written to you briefly, exhorting and witnessing that this is the true favor of God. Stand fast in it.

She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you her best wishes, and so does Mark, my son.

Salute each other with a kiss of love.

Peace be to you all who are in Christ.

SIMON PETER,

A SLAVE AND AN APOSTLE

OF

JESUS CHRIST,

To those who have obtained an equally precious faith with us, through the fairness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ:

May favor and peace be richly allotted to you in the full knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that his divine power has given us every thing which belongs to life and piety, through the full knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and virtue. And by this he has given us his precious and greatest promises; so that through these you may become sharers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by desire.

Yes, and on this very account, adding on your part all earnestness,

I: 5.

With and by your faith supply courage;
by your courage, knowledge;

by your knowledge, self-control;
by your self-control, endurance;
by your endurance, piety;

by your piety, brotherly kindness; by your brotherly kindness, love. For when these are yours and you have an abundance of them, they make you neither idle nor unfruitful towards the full knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For he who has not these is blind, near-sighted, and has forgotten the cleansing of his sins of long ago. For this reason, brothers, go the more earnestly to work to make your calling and selection sure. For when you do this you shall never stumble. For in this way will be richly supplied to you the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

So I shall always be ready to remind you of these, though you know them, and are established in the truth which is with you. But I think it right, so long as I am in this tent of the flesh, to stir you up by reminding you. For I know that the putting off of my tent will be sudden, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. And I will make an earnest effort so that after my decease you may be able to remember these things.

ΙΟ

1 : 16.

For we did not follow cunningly-devised fables, when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eye-witnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honor and praise, when there came such a voice to him from the majestic glory:

This is my beloved son.

In him I am well pleased.

And this voice we ourselves heard come out of heaven, when we were with him in the holy

mount.

And we have a prophetic declaration more certain than that to which you do well to take heed as to a lamp shining in a dark place, till the day dawns, and the day star rises in your hearts: knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture comes from private interpretation. For no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spoke from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit.

But false prophets came also among the people, as there will be false teachers also among you, and they will secretly bring in destructive heresies, denying even the Master who bought them, bringing on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their lascivious doings; and by reason of them the way of truth

2:3.

will be reviled, and with covetousness they will with feigned words make merchandise of you. And their sentence now from of old does not linger, nor does their destruction slumber.

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into Tartarus, and committed them to pits of darkness to be reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a proclaimer of goodness, when he brought a flood on the world of the irreverent; and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, having made them an example to those who should live irreverent lives, and delivered good Lot, sore distressed by the lascivious life of the wicked (for that good man living among them, in seeing and hearing, tortured his good soul from day to day with their lawless deeds): the Lord knows how to deliver the pious out of temptation, and to keep the wicked under punishment to the day of judgment; but chiefly those who follow the flesh in the desire of defilement, and despise dominion.

Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble to revile dignities, where angels, greater in might and power, do not bring a reviling judgment. against them before the Lord. But these, as

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